


Heaven has been filled with silence

by BlossomsintheMist



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/M, M/M, Prayer, Terminal Illnesses, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 04:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3473648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlossomsintheMist/pseuds/BlossomsintheMist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rowan is dying, and Maric is sure that Loghain will come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heaven has been filled with silence

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt meme on tumblr, the prompt was: "things you said with too many miles between us."

The first letter he sent was casual, little more than a note delivered by messenger.  He knew it presumed upon their friendship—maybe it was their old friendship, by now, the way things used to be—but truthfully he didn’t even think about it until he got the reply.  Rowan was sick.  Of course Loghain would come, how could he not?  He dashed it off in the space of fifteen minutes, barely thinking and half-frantic, certain that within days he’d see Loghain at the castle gates.  How could he  _not_  come?

When he got the formal letter in reply, talking about duty and circumstances, he knew.  He couldn’t believe it at first, not that Loghain could deny  _him_ , he could believe that just fine, but that Loghain wouldn’t come for Rowan.  He couldn’t understand, and that coalesced into a hard, cold anger, settling dull and heavy into his belly.  His next letter was just as formal, just as  _polite_ , suggested that the teyrn of Gwaren’s place was at court to help guide the country while the king stayed with the suffering queen.  Rowan would never write, he knew that, for whatever reason.  Loghain had to see that.  He had to come.

Loghain still did not come, and for a while, Maric was content to leave it that way.  Let him stay in Gwaren, while Rowan wasted away before his eyes, even as Maric clasped her hands, told her to fight, teased her, cajoled, commanded, even begged.  But as her strength continued to wane, as she grew greyer and greyer and less and less substantial before his eyes, he could not keep the thought back, that if he were Loghain, those words would work, he would simply demand it, Loghain could always reach her when Maric couldn’t, if Loghain were here, she would be better already.

He wrote another letter, and this one was pleading.  Not presuming, not written to a friend, not a cold command from Loghain’s king, it was desperate, as if Maric had bled his heart out onto the page.  ”Rowan is dying,” he wrote.  ”Please.  I need you.  She needs you.  She needed you more than she ever needed me.  Please come.  Please come.”

Loghain still did not come.  There was no reply, nothing but stony silence from Gwaren.  And if Rowan were not so ill, Maric thought he would have ridden there himself, thrown himself at Loghain’s feet if he had to, but he could not leave her.  He was all she had to lean on, inadequate as he was.

As she got worse and worse, when she could barely open her eyes, he held her hand as tightly as he dared, and he wept.  As if Loghain could hear him, he begged.  ”I need you,” he said.  ”Rowan needs you.  Won’t you come, it doesn’t have to be for me, forget me, just come for her, please, Loghain.  Please come.”

But Loghain did not hear him, just as Andraste did not.  Rowan died.  Maric had never felt so alone.

And then Loghain came, for the funeral, and Maric could barely look at him.  They stood next to each other at her pyre, and the distance between them felt wider than it ever had, wider than the miles between Denerim and Gwaren.


End file.
